


I have passed through fire

by Dorssia



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Angst, Everything Hurts, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Survivor Guilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 18:59:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13037400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dorssia/pseuds/Dorssia
Summary: She has not set foot in Emon for two hundred years. She has not stepped through the Sun Tree in three hundred. Even Vasselheim, especially Vasselheim, reminds her of the dead.





	1. Memories

 

It is a shock, every time she is reminded how long she has lived without them.

There are parts of the world she avoids, bruises on the surface of the earth that hurt too much to prod. Tal’dorei has become a map of centuries old wounds.

She has not set foot in Emon for two hundred years. She has not stepped through the Sun Tree in three hundred. Even Vasselheim, especially Vasselheim, reminds her of the dead. 

The last time she saw the holy city had been only two years after their victory. She had taken the form of a brass dragon- her memories making it too painful to look like any other- to fly across the Ozmit Sea. Before she could even reach the edge of the Vasper Timberlands she had been assaulted with a view of the primordial titan. In that moment, it reminded her too much of a gravestone. 

Vasselheim became her first bruise. She has not returned since. 

Perhaps if they had told her, all those years ago, that every place she had ever been would remind her of every person she had ever loved, she would not have taken up the mantle, would not have committed herself to a thousand years of suffering. 

One morning she wakes and finds that she cannot remember his name. She transports to Emon, to her, their, keep and reopens the deepest of her wounds. She had built a shrine for them, back when she could still hear their voices in her dreams. 

She once considered the ability to forget a blessing. Now she weeps for a spell to bring them back to her. She would rather suffer every night of her life than never see them again, she would relive their deaths a hundred times over if it meant she could remember the colors of their eyes. 

She hovers outside his room. She has not felt fear in so long, but she feels it now. Grief creeps into her throat and settles heavy as a stone right at the hollow. She is reminded of how the air smelled like snowdrops as the wind swept him away. 

All at once she is a child again, she is not The Voice of The Tempest, she is not the leader of her people, she is not one of the most powerful druids in the world, she is a girl made of grief crushing snowdrops in her fists, desperate to hold on to the only part of him she has left. She is a girl with long red hair cradled in the arms of a sister, choking on each breath of air, wishing it were her last.

The corridor swims as her eyes fill with tears. She twirls white hair between her fingers and aches for the warmth of Vex’s arms around her. It has been so long since she has had a friend. It has been so long since she has spoken to someone that remembers them. 

She opens the door. She sits among his things. She remembers his name.


	2. When you died I sang you a song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She avoids the Raven Queens shrine. She does not know if she will ever step foot in one again. She does not know if she can.

It takes her another five years after her visit to Emon to work up the courage to visit her friends again. 

She did not know where Grog had died. His body had fallen somewhere out on the plains. There was a tavern in Westruun named after him, The Titanstone Knuckles, where bards spun stories of the battle that managed to fell a legend. They made him sound like a god. She found peace in the knowledge that he had died with an axe in his hands. He would not have wanted to go out any other way. For Pikes sake, and if she is honest, for her own, she built a grave for him. Atop a hill she rose a shard of stone from the earth, tall, jagged and strong, the same color as his skin. 

Pike had only one wish for when she died, and it has only been fifty years since Keyleth made sure it came true. Atop a hill, flanked by an unwavering shard of stone stands a small structure spun from glass that faces the sun. For the second time, Keyleth sits in the center as the colors of the sunset flood the room. Her hair catches fire in the reflection of the glass, the dying sun setting the world ablaze. She sits next the graves of her dear friends and watches the pink and purple fade away until the sky is full of stars.

As she leaves she looks back one last time at the hill and imagines for a moment a goliath and a gnome staring up at the stars. 

As she steps through the Sun Tree all the courage Pike and Grog have given her wavers as she sees the castle with its banners flapping in the wind, displaying the crest she can still remember writing into the sky. 

They remember her, the de Rolo family. It brings her to tears to hear her name spoken in Percy’s voice. Of course, it is not Percy, only a boy that looks at her with the same sharp understanding in his eyes, but it is his voice and that is enough. 

They let her walk the castle. They give her time to remember. She finds herself in the great hall, staring up at the tapestries, at the likeness of generations of de Rolo children woven into the fabric. She finds Vex and Percy, scrutinizes them and builds new images of them in her mind with details she had forgotten: the exact shade of his eyes, the scar on Vex’s lip, the exact curve of her smile, the way his hair had fallen across his forehead.

Now that she’s looked at them, she can’t leave without saying a proper goodbye. 

In the crypts, she finally allows herself to cry, in the quiet beneath the earth before stone carved iterations of the people she knew. She remembers holding their hands as they died, eighty years apart to the day. She can feel the phantom weight of their hands in her palms. At least, when Percy had died, she had shared the grief with the whole group. He, of course, had only been the second of them to go. When Vex had died, it had been only her and the children that reminded her too much of Vax to look into their eyes who were left. 

She leaves behind two things in the crypt. The floor, covered in snowdrops, and three raven’s feathers, ink blue against the stone. 

Before she can return to Zephra, a girl with brown hair braided over one shoulder and a bow slung over the other stops her in the gardens. It is not hard to see Vex in her face. Keyleth has made peace, finally, with their deaths, and what once would have been pain that bloomed inside of her at a reminder of what she had lost, what she could have had, is replaced by warmth. 

Keyleth wraps the girl in a hug. The feeling is unfamiliar, for a moment, but when the girl melts into her Keyleth feels the six parts of her that had been missing begin to heal.

The girl says that they have been waiting years for her to return. That they have something they found in Vex’s things that they’ve been meaning to return. The girl hands her a sheathed dagger, the leather old, the steel still strong to the touch. The hilt is familiar. Keyleth’s hands shake as she accepts the gift. 

She leaves Whitestone, sparing only a glance at the temple of the Raven Queen. She does not know if she will ever step foot in one again. She does not know if she can. 

Back home, in Zephra, Keyleth unsheathes the flametongue dagger. She watches the fire lick at the blade and sits on her bed, closing her eyes as she remembers all the moments she watched him carve a path of fire through the air. For so long she has sealed away every part of him to protect herself, but holding a part of him in her hands, a part of them, a part of the years they lived, the adventures they had, brings him back to her, piece by piece. 

For the first time in a hundred years, a raven visits her at the tree she grew for him.

**Author's Note:**

> You can thank the campaign wrap up for this fic.


End file.
